Unimaginable
by Leraiv Snape
Summary: A worried Greg Lestrade summons John Watson to the Yard following the events of 'The Reichenbach Fall'. Sequel-companion to 'Precipice'.


Disclaimer: _Sherlock_ is not mine. This version of the current incarnation belongs to the BBC, and the original belongs to Sir Doyle.

A/N: This is a sequel-companion piece to 'Precipice' and companion to 'Unwanted Revelations'. It takes place less than two weeks after 'The Reichenbach Fall.' The title for this short story is taken from a song. For those familiar with the absolutely brilliant musical 'Hamilton', which hit Broadway in 2015, there is a piece towards the end of the show with the following lyrics:

"There are moments that the words don't reach,

there is suffering too terrible to name.

You hold your [child] as tight as you can,

and push away the unimaginable.

The moments where you're in so deep,

it feels easier to just swim down."

Please enjoy.

Unimaginable

"Worried about how I was getting on, Greg?"

Scotland Yard's foremost Detective Inspector looks at the man before him and nods frankly. John Watson has dropped weight by at least one stone, his collarbones cast sharp shadows on his flesh, his cheeks are hollowed, and his eyes…Gregory Lestrade has seen those dark blue eyes reflect every shade of expression known to man. Now they have none. The copper has stared into the honest gaze of too many criminals to believe any of that drivel about eyes being windows into souls, but John's, here and now, nearly make a believer out of him. Even the doctor's voice sounds dead – exhausted beyond measure, as if the world holds no more marvels he could ever care to see.

Sherlock Holmes stepped off the roof of a building less than two weeks ago.

His casket has been in the ground for a little under ninety-six hours.

If they don't find a way to re-engage the man before him in the act of living, John Watson's will be joining it very soon.

"Suddenly care about my life when you didn't give two shits about his?" the doctor prods coolly.

Lestrade closes his eyes against the question, swallows the reflexive desire to lash out in his own defense. _Of course_ he feels guilty. No matter that he argued against it, that he objected to those below and above him. It had still come down to being his job to arrest the man who'd solved every one of their impossible cases, a man who would never have committed such crimes – especially once he had John Watson in his life.

" _Have you got a warrant? Have you?" John stood on the stairwell, physically barring it. He couldn't fight the heavies Lestrade had been forced to bring with him – but the Yard chief could see that by God, he was going to try. And the D.I. was going to be the first to catch his fist._

" _Leave it, John." Lestrade knew his face had aged in the half-hour he'd been gone as he pushed past the smaller man. "Sherlock Holmes, I'm arresting you on suspicion of abduction—"_

" _He's not resisting," John objected as the officer behind his back too-roughly dragged one handcuffed arm to the other._

"— _and kidnapping," Lestrade finished heavily._

" _He's not resisting!"_

" _It's all right, John," Sherlock said quietly, his voice oddly soothing for a man in cuffs._

 _"No, it's not all right, this is ridiculous," John snapped back._

" _Get him downstairs, now." Lestrade ordered. He turned to John, the night's events accenting every grey hair. Arresting Sherlock was bad enough. Doing John too…the D.I. was going to need an ally in getting the consulting detective out of this. So his voice was sharp as he warned: "Don't try to interfere or I shall arrest you, too."_

"That's not…I care—" Swallows, makes himself use the past tense, "—cared about him as well, John." The doctor meets his eyes with dulled blue ones, and Lestrade can see that grief swamps even what anger he might be feeling, drowning it out in tidal waves. He forges ahead with the interview.

"I'm glad you agreed to come down today. It's just…we've… _I've_ …" How to say it? When the two stubborn idiots hadn't even managed to say it to each other?

"We were flat mates, Greg. In a dangerous line of work." John doesn't try for the tired smile he's paraded for his sister, for Mrs. Hudson, for the patients he continues to see (oftentimes well into the evening now – why go home to that empty bedsit, to the flat that is deliberately _not_ 221B Baker Street, to the complete ruin of his lonely life?). But Gregory Lestrade knows the two men perhaps better than anyone else (with the possible exception of Mycroft Holmes, whom John will _not see_ until someone brings him a sliver of ice from Hell) and John cannot be bothered to lie to him. "Something was bound to happen to one of us, sooner or later."

 _Dammit, John, you were a hell of a lot more than flat mates. Anyone who spent more than three minutes in a room with both of you knew that._

Their connection had been…instant? It was hard to say. One day, Lestrade had called Sherlock to a crime scene and Dr. John Watson had stepped out of the cab right behind him. The dark-haired consulting detective had included the shorter, compact doctor out-of-hand, as if they'd been doing it for years.

" _Why'd he do that? Why did he have to leave?" Lestrade was watching the window, frowning at where the cab and Sherlock just disappeared._

 _John shrugged beside him. "You know him better than I do."_ _The D.I. sized up the man in front of him, thought about the way Sherlock had instinctively looked to him for social cues, had taken his gentle instruction, and shook his head._

" _I've known him for five years. And no, I don't." Something in this new man, this steady military doctor with firm hands and a compassionate eye, had spoken to Sherlock. Even in all his rude abruptness tonight, something had felt…tamed…in the detective's formerly wild manner._

John Watson had been unbelievably good for Sherlock, in the most unpredictable ways. The last two years with the detective had been far more bearable – sometimes even approaching friendly, as living with John, learning niceties for John's approval, had softened his ragged edges, taking the raw, feral force and gentling it ever-so-slightly.

The policeman can't say any of this, though. Doesn't have the right to say it, after the part he had played – willing or not. And what purpose would it serve the broken-hearted man in front of him to hear it? That which is left unsaid and undone is irretrievable. The living must go on with life. God knows he's seen that reality too often.

"Speaking of a dangerous line of work…" Lestrade lets the sentence hang in the air. John lifts his head, fixes him with those sorrow-riddled eyes, and tries to give him an approximation of paying attention. The D.I. suspects it's a lost cause, but he's going to make the offer anyway.

"Look, John – Dr. Watson. You're damned good at what you do. And, for a little over two years, you did it with the best. Any chance you'd be interested in medical forensics? A month of training with the team here and you'll be at the top of the game. We can always use a skilled doctor. Especially with your experience."

John almost can't process what Lestrade is offering. Police work? Forensics? At the Yard?

 _And spend every crime scene wondering what Sherlock would see? What he would deduce? Whether I've missed yet one more_ "So far, so obvious"? _To kneel over a body and look up, expecting that face of angled planes and beautiful hollows shaped by a sculptor of exquisite skill, only to see those who were only too delighted to see him fall? Anderson? Donovan? Lestrade? A stranger?_

He knows the offer is kindly meant. That Lestrade abhorred the duty he was given. That the D.I. is sincere in his praise of John's potential. But—

 _Sherlock_.

John closes his eyes, drops his head, swallows. He had never let himself say it. Even in the privacy of his own head. Never let himself fantasize. Ruthlessly suppressed any physical reactions that might have betrayed him, as well as any emotional response that accompanied it.

 _Sherlock's blinding grin when he knows he'd figured it out, the total focus of that gaze on John's face. The ex-Army doctor feels his heart kick under his ribs—_

— _Sherlock, laughing in exhilaration as they climb yet another fire escape, his hand extended to John as the shorter man scrambles up beside him, the fingers that remain clasped for a few seconds longer than necessary, the joy of the chase, of their effortless connection in action seething in the air between them—_

— _Sherlock, his London-sky-grey eyes terrified, his hands everywhere as he unzips the jacket carrying enough explosives to take out a city block, ripping it off John's body and throwing it away from them both. John's collapse – not only from relief, but also from the drowning fear he'd seen in Sherlock's gaze when Moriarty was talking, the overwhelming understanding that he_ matters _to this amazing, enigmatic man—_

— _Sherlock, standing over a corpse, deducing rapidly, his brain by far the most magnetic thing about him – John can't look away from him now, and wouldn't, not if the whole world exploded around them – the sparkle in those now grey-green eyes as he turns to the doctor, sharing a secret meant for the two of them, regardless of the fact that half the Yard is present, and John's heart is tumbling—_

 _Sherlock. Standing on a roof. So, so close to the edge. Close enough that there's only one course of action to follow. John stares at his flat mate, his colleague, his friend…the center of his universe…as if his eyes can prop up that figure, slim and straight and fragile against the massive blue sky._ Make this not be happening, _John prays to whatever entity lies beyond the blue._ Make this not be real.

 _And the sickening understanding that though he has lied to himself, the truth is still present, and because he stifled it before, here it now stands, roaring in his ears, pounding in his blood, begging to be spoken – perhaps it can save him! – and it will remain unsaid, as the man to whom it should have been spoken so long ago wavers on a precipice—_

" _Goodbye, John."_ _The mobile is dead. "SHERLOCK!" And all the things unspoken…stay unspoken. Because Sherlock has taken the step. And that body – all tensile strength and masculine beauty and wondrous, marvelous mind – is falling, falling to smash on the pavement, falling to non-existence, falling—_

"I can't." His voice is hoarse, quiet, wrecked. He turns his face away. Whatever the D.I. didn't know before, he's bound to guess it now.

"John…listen to me," Greg comes forward, around the desk, props himself against it, places a hand on the doctor's shoulder. "Look – you don't have to take a job here at the Yard. I understand if you don't want to see our faces. But don't pretend that it wasn't what it was…for God's sake, John, he was the center of your world."

 _Not so subtle, then_.

"And you were the fulcrum of his," the copper continues quietly. At this, John's head comes up, uncomprehending.

"We weren't a couple, Greg, no matter what everyone thought," he says tiredly.

"I didn't say you were a couple, John. I know you weren't. But you loved him. And he…" Lestrade clenches his teeth against the onslaught of memory, of too-late understanding, against Sherlock's voice, recorded in that final conversation with Moriarty:

" _All your friends,"_ _the mocking Irish lilt threatened._

" _John?" Sherlock's hoarse voice rasped._

It had been just the one word. But it was the only one. The only person who _really_ counted. The only one Lestrade believed Sherlock would have stepped off a building for. There was fear, and need, and adoration, and despair in those four letters.

If Lestrade had ever doubted that the consulting detective who had lived through overdoses to be a pain in his arse had a heart, the proof was in that single word. One syllable that was the sound of that heart breaking.

"And he adored you," he finishes quietly.

John takes a deep, shuddering breath. "I know you may not appreciate or want it, but we're here for you, John. We want you to be able to move on. To…to live your life. Whatever help you may need from us."

The Army doctor is silent for a long time. _And he adored you._ _He_ adored _you._

John carefully scrapes his memories of his flat mate, the only man he'd ever loved, together. The smiles – the blinding grin, the swift twist of his lips when he thought no one saw, the quicksilver smile that he only ever gave to John, the ironic showing of teeth he reserved for his brother. The moodiness that made John wonder if London's unpredictable weather took it's cue from Sherlock Holmes. The experiments all over the kitchen (who would have thought it was possible to miss severed heads in the refrigerator alongside the cheese?), wandering into the living room if not carefully watched. The late-night texts that dragged him from his bed, the mad dashes to taxis, the half-eaten take away left behind in cabs, on front stoops, in newspaper shops.

He pulls these memories, weaving the last two years in a bright tapestry, and then locks them away. He shoves them behind mental doors of heavy oak and locks of steel as he did Afghanistan (wounded children, dying mothers, the heat, the Taliban, Kate, from his own unit, staring at him with pleading eyes as he labors uselessly until the stomach shot kills her). He pushes them down, seeking the quietness he'd had before Sherlock Holmes walked into his world and turned the whole of his life on its head.

" _Nothing ever happens to me."_

Had that really been his complaint? Nothing? Such emptiness had to be preferable to the soul-rending agony that has been his life since Sherlock stepped off the roof of St. Bart's.

He consciously straightens his back, lifts his head to meet the concerned gaze of the D.I. in front of him. What Lestrade sees in those eyes makes him wonder if suicide might not be the less painful option for Dr. Watson.

There's nothing personal there, now. There's nothing there at all.

Even his voice is steady, politely impersonal when he speaks. "Thank you, Detective Inspector. I believe there is nothing I require at the moment. I'll see myself out."

The physician rises, strides to the door, opens it, and exits. Lestrade is left staring after a stranger – and wondering whether he will ever see the doctor again.

888

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